PBP: Fasting and Feasting

I can't fast in a traditional "eat no food" sort of sense. I can't go a day without food, even if it just sun up to sun down. I can't even skip meals. I'm not diabetic, but I do have issues with blood sugar, and when I don't eat I end up doing silly things like passing out and ending up with a nice lump on the back of my head.

I fast by cutting things out of my life, and not around food. I fast by not allowing myself to watch Netflix for a month. Or taking a weekend to unplug from everything, internet, phone, tv, the works. Usually I unplug at cons. These days it is a bit harder as there are things structurally in my life that make unplugging problematic for others and not just myself, but I'm still working that out. At some point, I'm going to attempt the exercise of a silent weekend. Preferably, while camping or otherwise away from my home where I hear everything in the streets nearby. Silent weekend. Unplug things that are not necessary  and turn them all off. Turn off the phone, the music, even the fan. Journal, write, read, but do not talk or otherwise make noise. Sit with the silence. This is an endeavor I hope to accomplish at some point.

But one of the points of fasting is appreciating the feast. The abundance. And other than the verbal expression of gratitude to the people in my life who contribute to said abundance, other than occasional mentions of it to the Gods, Spirits, and other such Beings in my life, I am terrible at appreciating abundance.

I didn't think of things in these sorts of terms. Partly because I shy away from dichotomies. Boundaries are flexible, blurry things in my mind and life, as are definitions. So, thinking of feast as opposed to fast (or famine) is a difficult endeavor for me. They aren't dichotomous in the sense of opposites, but in the sense of complements, of counterparts.

Except a ritual last week (and why this entry is going up late) made me rethink my paradigms around these subjects. I was a ritual guide for another, and their ritual was one of cutting away unhealthy things and appreciating the abundance of healthy things in their life. Part of the ritual was a literal feast of abundance. There was more than we could eat or even offer. The rest were leftovers, intentionally, to be eaten at another time.

Also, it was actually a good example of giving freely to the Gods as well, because this individual decided at various points to give more in offerings than planned. They basically decided at various points that they wished to offer more, and so they did. I'm always pleased when people decide that to offer more (especially when such offerings create no hardship,) the Gods appreciate an abundance as well. But, as usual, I digress.

I fast in part to appreciate the feast. Now, I am working on structuring a new ritual for my life, feasting to appreciate the times of famine. Be it a dinner with friends, or perhaps just an overabundance of good reading, there are plenty of times for a moment of thanks, a moment of appreciation and a moment for my Gods.

Fasting I use mostly as a form of cleansing, and especially as ritual preparation  Time that feasting takes it's own place in my life as something beyond the mundane.

Pagan Blog Project: B is for Boundaries

Maybe this post ought to belong more under L for Liminality, but boundaries will do. And if you wonder why this is a few days late, go look up Douglas Adams' opinion on deadlines.

I exist at midpoints and cross-sections, my life is a liminal space. Some of this is obvious, seeing as I'm not just trans (FAAB if you're wondering) but literally "in transition." My physical body hops back and forth across the line between what are considered traditionally male and female attributes. I'm not what most people would consider androgynous, but for those who really get to see my body there isn't a better word. Unless there was a word akin to ambivalent for androgynous, as I am not a blending, an absence, but rather a mix of strongly attributed signs of both male and female. But I digress. The point I make here, is that my life isn't actually filled with mixes of colors. It appears that way from a distance, like a Seurat painting, upon close inspection it is series of dots. I'm strangely unmixed, filled with boundaries instead of a smooth blend. So, unshockingly, boundaries have been on my mind a great deal lately.

Boundaries are something many (if not most) pagans/polytheists/etc. recognize as a thing power. Most magically inclined people I know have some kind of ward on their home specially based/focused on the threshold. 

Look at transitional times and spaces, we find some truly spiritually powerful concepts. Dusk and dawn, the times of twilight when we exist in neither day or night. Midnight is the division between the days themselves, and aniversaries, be they the New Year, or the marking an occasion like the day one was born, are celebrated thresholds in time. The tops of cliffs mark the border between earth and sky, and sometimes water, if they fall off into a lake, river, ocean, etc. The boundaries are sacred places where difference meets.

Except, many woo/spooky sorts of people have a really terrible sense of personal boundaries. We don't admit to how much we nonconsensually push our energy on others. Coming from multiple communities where every touch was asked, even a handshake or a welcoming hug to an old friend, the I abhor idea of sending personal energy to another person without prior consent. 

A concept I picked up at a BDSM class was the idea of ETDs, energetically transmitted diseases. The woo-folk in the class all got sudden looks of realization. Upon the instructor saying "you know how you hook up with someone, and end up with their baggage?" everyone else's faces in the room got the same look. Ever since then I've been drastically more careful about my own personal energetic boundaries. Particularly when hooking up with people, I'm very careful about making sure neither of us walks away with the other's shit to deal with.

Except many people who work with energy do NOT think about boundaries. So many people send healing energies at others without prior consent. Sure, healing energies have their time and place, but to me it's akin to penicillin. Sure, it revolutionized medicine and treated all sorts of things, but if you give it to me, I end up in the hospital. Not to mention the number of things it doesn't do anything about. Sending unwanted energy? Same thing. Other people having written about this subject more in depth and more eloquently. But the fact remains, many pagans/woo type folk are shit about consent.

I hold no excuses, and in my early years as a practitioner I was not so great about consent either. But partway through high school I realized my energy didn't "play well with others." There were a lot of reasons for that, but those didn't matter half so much as the realization that pushing unwanted energy onto others caused actual problems. My life was a shitstorm of mostly-failed attempts at coping, and no one deserved an ounce of what I was going through. Their lives were hard enough without someone else's shit dropping in on them. When I finally heard the concept of ETDs, things clicked into place. Years prior I had that knowledge but not the words. I stopped working with others in any spiritual or magical capacity for years until my life, and energy, were drastically more under control.

Clear defined boundaries are something we need to pay a lot more attention to. Yes, because they are healthy useful things that keep us all healthy and productive. Yes, because of consent. Yes, because even spirits and Gods sometimes need to be told a clear "No." But beyond all that, we need clear boundaries because boundaries are sacred. That clear line delineating between my energy and yours? Sacred. It is a holy thing to me. Respecting that boundary, and crossing it with permission are sacred acts to be celebrated. Respecting the power found in boundaries, and liminal spaces, requires respecting those boundaries.

It isn't about crossing lines or not crossing them, it's about being aware of permission, of consent.

Intent (Pagan Blog Project)

Intent is something I hear a lot in religious, philosophical and magical discussions. Philosophical debates on whether or not intent matters in ethical situations are fascinating, but sadly beside the point at the moment. The fact is that various religions disagree on how much intent matters, from not at all to it's the most important part. Magical acts are often boiled down to nothing but intent.

We treat intention at it's extremes. Intent doesn't matter at all comes into play when attempting to understand the old religions many of us are reconstructing. One of the biggest things people did was make offerings, regardless of intent or belief. It didn't matter if you believed in the Deities who you were making offerings to, it didn't matter if you were They're followers, you did it because that is how people stayed safe and avoided Divine Displeasure. There are a lot of things that are done in religions regardless of the intent, especially in Judaism (although everything that can be said about Judaism is somewhere both supported and contradicted by rabbinical authority.) My brother tries to convince me to do Jewish things, even though my beliefs lay elsewhere, because it doesn't matter if I don't believe them, it is the act that matters. Belief will follow. But for me, that kind of act is a lie.

There is a lot of New Age thought around intent. The idea that when you put out intentions they come back to you. Now, there is some underlying truth to this thought. When doing magic, yes, intent definitely matters. If I'm not actually intending for a spell to work, odds are it isn't going to. By the same token, if the intent is there, but the rest of the components are not, there is a good chance the spell won't work. Trying to use Jupiter to help gain wealth works, but if you accidentally used the symbol for Saturn you'll probably find the intention won't overcome the inlaid spiritual paths of the universe. Even just dealing with intention magic, sometimes your intent isn't welcome.

It is really common in magical, energetic, and New Age communities to send energies of various kinds to people without their permission. There's this notion that with good intent, that magic can do no harm. Others have written wonderfully about this so I'm going to leave it short. Intent is not all that matters. Maybe your intent is to help someone with their pain, but they are meant to feel that pain to actually learn from it. Maybe your energy just isn't good for them. The fact is, intentions are not everything.

We think of intent as black or white. Either intent is everything, or it is nothing.

The world isn't black and white, it isn't even shades of gray. We have a wide range of colors and tones, so why are we limiting our understanding of intent to it's extremes?

Intention is a major factor and is a great guiding force. It is the compass and the map, but we will still get lost sometimes anyways. And know what? That's okay, not just okay but wonderful. And if you step on someone's toes, or trespass their boundaries, being able to hold up said map and compass and genuinely apologize, and ask for directions, it goes a long ways. Be it a spirit who you accidentally offended with an offering, or hugging a friend when they did not want to be touched, talking and communicating about intent really helps. You learn that when said friend gets upset, you two take a walk and decidedly do not touch. You learn that said spirit wants your ale, your whiskey, but by the gods do not give it flowers. Most of the time, these relationships are repairable once you explain intent and communicate about how you have fucked up. Or maybe how they have fucked up.

On the other hand, intention can also lead to irreparable harm. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," being the most obvious example in common parlance. (If it was the road to Hel/Helheim instead, honestly, I wouldn't mind it particularly much.) You can trespass on territory that gets you seriously injured, or maybe someone else. There is only so far intention can go for feeding someone peanuts with a peanut allergy. Doing the research helps cut down on that. Getting smacked upside the head physically, psychically, metaphorically, etc. can really help as well. On the other hand, being on the receiving end of the comic wake up call to get your shit together probably won't be a pleasant experience.

We all fuck up. Intention doesn't make things better, but it makes them comprehensible and enables all of us to move the fuck on.